Monsters reveal how societies define and punish deviance. Wintering’s widows make me think about the women I know who are strong and wise in ways neither recognised nor endorsed by the mainstream.
Shinto and Buddhist ideas about interconnectedness have deeply influenced Japan, shaping centuries-old rituals and stories whose impact continues today.
In myths and songs, Hairypeople were understood as human-like but uncivilised. Different responses to them in two Warlpiri communities show how colonisation has changed these monsters too.
Kiersten Formoso, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Hollywood loves a good monster battle, and where better to turn for inspiration than the animal kingdom? Traits from real animals can provide clues about the fighting prowess of Kong and Godzilla.
Fear of a disease that seemed to turn people into beasts might have inspired belief in supernatural beings that live on in today’s creepy Halloween costumes.
In the project Erasing Frankenstein, students, educators and incarcerated women collaborated to created an erasure poem of Mary Shelley’s classic text, and publicly showcase their work.
Popular monsters often reflect humanity’s greatest fears. Godzilla, with its destructive rampages, is the foremost monster for our age of environmental threat.
The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh, from around 2,100 BC. But the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome.
Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage was really a journey into the unknown. Centuries of conventional wisdom had conditioned him to believe that bizarre beasts and ‘monstrous men’ would be awaiting him.
Even if mermaids aren’t real, they’ll likely feature in human stories for many years to come. Very few mythical creatures are found in so many diverse cultures, across so many years without changing.